Tuesday, July 22, 2014

What I've Been Reading - July 2014 Edition

The Staff of Serapis by Rick Riordan
Actually a short story. Rick's setting up a crossover book with his two series, the one featuring Greek demigods and the one featuring Egyptian, er, demigods (Too long to explain). This is the second short story doing this and it was a lot of fun, featuring Annabeth from the Olympians and Sadie from the Egyptian series. The two characters mix really well and it was a lot of fun.

Field of Prey by John Sandford
Our most reliable and consistent thriller writer. A little bit of a return to his earlier books, which is to say, grim and disturbing. When a couple teenagers go out into an abandoned farm to get laid, they accidentally uncover a well that's pretty much filled with the bodies of missing women.

Robert B. Parker's Cheap Shot by Ace Atkins
I'm not in love with Atkins' Spenser novels, but I think he probably does it as well as anybody could. The voice is just different enough that it sets my alarm bells. On the plus side, the plots are generally better than Parker's were, and he's developing some new schtick between Spenser and Hawk. Recommended.

Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden's Syndrome by John Scalzi
Okay. Wow. John has a book coming out, I believe in a could weeks, Locked In, that involves a near-future world that has been ravaged by a virus. But this virus causes, in some cases, the person to eventually go into a physically locked-in state, they're essentially paralyzed, unable to talk and move, but are fully conscious. In Unlocked, he presents a somewhat epistolary version of the spread of the virus and how things changed technologically and culturally as a result. The gist of it is that someone developed, basically, avatars—neural networks that could operate robots, and then the various cultural things that came out of it. It's an amazing, thought-provoking and occasionally disturbing novella and I'm looking forward to the novel.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling
Needs no explanation.

Frozen Solid by James M Tabor
A research scientist goes to South Pole Station to do a Antarctic-water dive to collect some unknown bacteria that were found growing in the frigid water. Meanwhile, there have been a series of odd deaths, seemingly accidental or medical, of some of the women on the station. It's enjoyable, has some strange off-kilter behavior, and a little too closely resembles one of my WIPs, CRYSTAL STORM, which may or may not someday get finished and published, but I thought it was good.

The Churn: An Expanse Novella by James S.A. Corey
The Expanse series is terrific space opera. This takes us down to Earth, Baltimore basically, to give us some backstory about one of the characters in the novella. I'm not so sure how it fit into the Expanse series (in terms of how accurate the character's backstory seemed), but I thought it was a pretty fascinating look at the Earth of that series.

The Cuckoo's Calling by JK Rowling
Her first crime novel featuring Cormoran Strike, a PI in London. It's very British, very slow and textured, but the character of Cormoran is terrific. It's also very, very different from the Harry Potter novels, and if I hadn't known they were written by the same person I wouldn't have guessed she wrote them both. I do find that there are significant thematic material concerning the nature of fame. I imagine I will read the second one eventually.

Saga, Volume 1 by Brian K Vaughan & Fiona Staples
This is an SF graphic novel my oldest son wanted me to read. It ain't a comic book. It's very adult with a fair amount of nudity, sex, and, of course, violence. It takes place in some galactic area with an ongoing war between a couple species and two of them have fallen in love and had a baby, and as a result, they are being hunted by the various governments and bounty hunters. Weird. Graphic. Engaging. Strange.

Bone Deep by Randy Wayne White
I have a lot of respect for Randy and his Doc Ford novels. Just not this one. I'll stop there.